


You Are Mine

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [220]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Fisherman Steve, M/M, Spells & Enchantments, merman tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 08:50:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17383466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: It wasn’t the slap of the water that awakened him, nor the distant cry of the gull.





	You Are Mine

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: You've got the sea running through your veins and sea foam stuck in your hair as you dream of endless blue expanses. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

It wasn’t the slap of the water that awakened him, nor the distant cry of the gull. It was the quiet, the absolute stillness, which had taken their place.

Steve sat up with a start and listened. Held his breath and ignored the pound of his heart and listened again.

Nothing.

He scrambled out of his bunk and felt his way through the narrow cabin. Pushed his way out into the open air and the dark. Above him, the sky looked as it always had in the small hours after midnight: a rich, plum-soaked black cut through with thousands of stars, tiny pinpricks of light chastened by the bright shine of the moon--full tonight, its fingers stretched over the water and across the deck, over his bare feet and up the worn folds of his pants. In some ways this calmed him, that what lay above was the same, for the water that surrounded him like long copper glass was anything on this night but ordinary. It lay smooth as silk from the edge of the boat to the lengths of the horizon, so far as Steve could possibly see. And it shone, far more than simply from the light of the heavens; as Steve watched, the whole of it seemed to glow as if the depths themselves were on fire, as if the world below the sea--the fish and the sharks and the whales--were at war.

“What in all the great--!”

His own voice sounded out of place, odd and strained, and he wondered for a moment if he was still wandering in dreams; if in a moment he would shift in his bed and open his eyes and find the night as he’d left it a few hours before: smooth sailing and the hum of the engine and the gentle churn of the waves.

The _engine_.

Why, the very boat itself has stopped. How had he not noticed before? His vessel sat dead in the water.

Now there was fear, an aching grip of panic that clasped his hands together and twisted, made his breath go hollow rough in his chest. He’d been on the sea all his life, worked it for more than half, and he’d never seen such a night as this, never felt quite so strange. Every hair on his neck stood, those on his arms too, and the longer he stared down his predicament, the more ill at ease he became. What saint had he offended? he wondered, his mind drifting to his mother’s church, to the priest who blessed him before every excursion to ease his mother’s mind. What sin had he committed that was so evil so as to justify the terror he felt?

“Please,” he whispered, casting the word into the dark, to the ears of a god he’d never bothered to believe in. “Help.”

All at once there was a roar, a hollow sound from beneath the boat that made every plank rattle, that send him staggering towards the railing, a sound that seemed expelled from the mouth of hell itself, and then there was water everywhere, a great jet of it that shot up from the stern of his boat and sent him crashing to the deck disoriented and scared and in the next breath, there was something falling beside him as if tossed up from the dregs and when he turned his head, terrified, the expression he saw mirrored his own.

For what lay beside him there, gasping into the wet wood of the deck, was a man. A man with long dark hair and a short, neat beard and a--

And a--

And a tail.

It started at the midpoint of his thighs and stretched all the way down to his feet, or where they should have been. In the moonlight, the scales sang, rippling rapidly from black to blue to pink and gold and up and down again, as if the scales, like their master, were panting for breath.

“Don’t,” the man said faintly. He turned his face towards Steve. His eyes were like the sky at dawn, a restless blue. “Don’t need your help.”

His accent was very odd; stilted, almost formal, but the eyes, the coughing fits that still wracked his body were anything but. Steve turned fully to his side and pushed up, sat looking down at the stranger, at the tangled waves woven through with seaweed and shells that fell to his shoulder and beyond. A shoulder that was well muscled and strong, as were the man's arms; and his skin--dear god, his skin--it glistened as if he'd bathed in starlight.

“Don’t,” the man said again, stronger this time, the word coming up like a punch. He struggled feebly, his gaze finding Steve’s. “ _Homa_ , no, do not--”

There was pain on the stranger’s face and in his body, the twist of his limbs, the arch of his back, and what Steve did, that which changed his life, he did without thinking, without any sense of potential consequence: he reached out and touched the man’s face.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I can see that you’re hurt. How can I help?”

Before the words had left his mouth, his hand burned, less a pain than a tingling that shot up his arm and over his shoulder, trailed its hungry hands down his back, and it only made sense for him to cup his fingers around the man’s neck and rub gently at the hub of his spine.

The merman (for that’s what he was, surely) made a soft sound and arched into Steve’s hand. His lips parted.

“You shouldn’t have done that, _homa_.”

Steve shifted closer, leaned down on his knees. “Why not?”

The merman’s eyes turned to him, glowing with same ardor as the sea had. “Because,” he said with a smile, "now you are mine.”


End file.
